


Speedruns

by JumpingShinyFrogs



Category: Monster Hunter (Video Games)
Genre: Character tags added as needed, Fluff, Gen, Humor, No Plot/Plotless, Prompt Fill, Sometimes very dark tones, Transformation, accepting prompts/requests, mild body horror, slight dark tones
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:22:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23154745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JumpingShinyFrogs/pseuds/JumpingShinyFrogs
Summary: A collection of Monster Hunter oneshots with one thing in common: they were all written really quickly, based on a prompt. I figured I’d collect them all in one place instead of polluting the fandom page with them.There’s no set update schedule for this, but I will try to write them with relative frequency. If you’ve got a prompt or a request, leave it in the comments (no smut though).Stories So Far:Heart of the AbyssA Day at the SmithyA Wish With a PriceSalt and Smoke
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	1. Heart of the Abyss

**Author's Note:**

> Stories Thus Far
> 
> Heart of the Abyss (A dragon’s heart, still beating, thinks about getting revenge on the one who wronged it.)  
> A Day at the Smithy (The Manvil Smithy deals with beggars, liars, and flaming dragons.)  
> A Wish With a Price (A lone traveler comes across a strange shop and makes a questionable decision.)  
> Salt and Smoke (The black smelting dragon awakens and wreaks its terrible vengeance upon an unsuspecting village.)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “Black Dragons” (courtesy of the MHA Writer’s Guild)  
> Clock Starts: 22:13  
> Clock Stops: 23:42  
> Time Spent Writing: ~1hr 10min  
> Time Spent Editing: ~20min  
> Summary: A dragon’s heart, thrown into the sea, tries to pull itself together to get revenge on the one who wronged it.  
> Word Count: 2270
> 
> Extra Notes: This oneshot was written in November and originally posted to Monster Hunter Amino. It has not been edited in any way since.

Teeth pressed into the heart, puncturing the muscular flesh and forcing thick, dark blood to ooze out. The heart screamed and tried to thrash its phantom limbs, but the jaws only clenched tighter. Its captor showed no signs of letting it go. The heart screeched silently and willed the other dragon to drop it, to show it the respect it deserved. Hot, putrid breath rolled over it. If the organ was still capable of shuddering, it would have.

Oh how it wanted nothing more than to smite the worthless, lowly creature that dared to lay her jaws upon it. The Alatreon thought she had conquered the heart, like she was somehow better than the strongest, most lethal dragon alive. The heart knew that wasn’t true. Just a few weeks prior, it had held the Alatreon by her throat. It had imposed its will upon her and shown her just how weak and powerless she truly was in the face of a goddess. 

The heart had let the Alatreon live, then. It had thought it would be hilarious. Snap the smaller dragon’s leg in half, shatter her ribs, and let her live the rest of her life knowing she’d never be as mighty as a black dragon of destiny. But now the tables were turned, and the heart was the powerless one, held in the jaws of its loathed enemy and unable to even scream.

Even amidst its boiling rage, the heart tried to focus on what was important. Yes, it was beaten for now. But someday it would pull itself back together, and then it would go and reclaim its lost pride. Last time it had resurrected itself from the dead, it drowned the world in a plague of madness. It could do it again, and this time it wouldn’t be so foolish as to let the Alatreon keep her windpipe intact.

Suddenly cold air rushed around the heart, and it felt itself plummeting to the ground. The Alatreon must have finally realised she was grasping her better in her mouth like some common piece of meat and dropped it. Were the heart a lesser beast, it might have been worried about shattering against the hard ground below, but it was an aspect of the great destroyer himself. It knew it would survive, and as soon as it made impact it would begin pulling itself together.

Cold, salty water stabbed into the heart’s flesh like a thousand tiny needles. It felt the air being knocked out of its phantom lungs, and for just a moment it stopped its beating. Desperately it wriggled as much as it could, shouting into the void, but the weight of the water pressed in around it, suffocating even that which had no need of air. Even when it was whole, the heart had never dared to venture into the depths of the sea before. Deeper and deeper it sank, until after an eternity it came to rest on the seafloor. Jagged rocks scraped uncomfortably against its flesh. It would need to build its scales back up quickly. 

Concentrating, the heart tried to force muscle and sinew to grow and blood vessels to extend from its severed arteries to rebuild its body as quickly as possible. It felt the cells begin to multiply and gave a mental sigh of relief. It would retake its place alongside the other black dragons soon.

Abruptly, the growth stopped. The heart growled internally and tried again to force itself to grow. Again, growth started briefly, then stopped. Dread settled in the heart’s soul. So deep below the surface and its life-giving sunlight, the water surrounding it was frigidly cold. When it was whole, the heart was a being of fire and ash. Was the ice-cold water of the deep sea the only force that could hope to stop its rebirth?

Again and again the heart tried to rebuild itself, a scream building up in the back of its mind, until at last it gave up and lost itself to the cold and the scream and the fear of being _trapped_.

* * *

The heart had no concept of how long it had spent trapped in the ocean’s embrace. Without a body and flowing blood, it had no way of telling the time, and without its gorgeous crystalline eyes, it couldn’t see what was around it. Nothing, it imagined. Even as a disembodied heart, the former dragon knew it was glorious and fear-inspiring. The mere scent of it should clear the lesser beasts for miles around.

It snarled internally at the thought. Lesser beasts like that wretched Alatreon. How dare she stand up to her betters? How dare she drop the heart into the sea like some worthless piece of garbage? The heart should have just killed her when it had the chance. Then it wouldn’t be stuck down here, alone in the crushing darkness and the frigid cold that threatened to lull it into an eternal sleep.

The heart felt the ground around it rumble. It ignored the disturbance. Small quakes like this had been happening regularly for the past who knew how long. Yet, the quaking didn’t stop. It only intensified, until the heart felt itself being jostled from the position it had been stuck in and rolled down a silty slope, now pressed up against even pointier rocks.

The heart was about to shriek in impotent rage at this new situation, but all of a sudden warmth gushed up around it, so hot after so long spent in the perishing cold that the heart could barely feel it. The heart recoiled in pain for just a moment, but then it realised what an opportunity it had. This surprise heat must have been a gift from one of its brethren, inviting it to rejoin them and lay waste to humans and Alatreon alike.

Hastily, the heart began scraping itself together. It forced its bones and muscles and blood to grow faster than they ever had before. There was no time to waste. It had no idea how long this sudden bounty of heat was going to last, and it refused to be stuck for another eternity with a half-formed lump of scales for a body. It let its tissues spread out into an approximation of its old shape, but growled as it felt a clod of molten rock lodge into one of its tender new shoulders. It didn’t have time to purge any impurities. All that mattered was forming a body so it could escape.

By the time the blazing heat had waned to a mere warm rush, the heart had finally finished reconstructing itself. Opening its eyes for the first time in what felt like an eternity, the dragon looked around. Just as it had suspected, it was at the bottom of the sea, so far down that it couldn’t see any light when it looked up towards the surface. Its fresh lungs had been crushed into uselessness by the water pressure, but the dragon had fashioned itself a crude set of gills to use.

Rejoicing in the feeling of muscles stretching and scales grinding against scales, the dragon craned its long neck to examine itself and recoiled. Though it couldn’t be entirely sure, it was fairly sure it had made itself into a female again. Once, the dragon might have been annoyed by that. She had started her life as a male, but had managed to lose some rather important equipment during her first rebirth. By now, she was used to the change and wasn’t too fussed about it.

No, what had made the dragon pull her head back in disgust was the shape of her new body. Where she had intended to craft supple black scales and beautiful fanlike wings, she’d instead covered herself in an ugly, lumpy blackish-brown carapace that looked like it was melting. Her wings, if they could even still be called that, were stumpy and twisted and just as melted as the rest of her. They didn’t even have any webbing. How was she supposed to fly with them?

Threads of molten magma coursed along her outer carapace, illuminating the dark water with a pale red glow. The dragon snarled. That must have been what did it. Those clods of molten rock and silt that had gotten mixed up in her blood. They’d melted her fresh scales and destroyed her wings. She didn’t even really look like one of her brethren anymore—the basic shape was there, but that was where the resemblance ended.

Would the humans still know to call her Fatalis and fear her as a dragon of destiny? Would the great destroyer still take her in as one of his many aspects? Or would this warped new visage she wore leave her cast aside and forgotten? She snarled. This was all that damned, cursed Alatreon’s fault. The Alatreon had no right to throw her heart into the sea. It was one thing to confine her in a watery tomb, but to cut her off from the rest of her kind was unforgivable.

Up until now, the dragon had wanted to kill the Alatreon for her crimes. Now, the dragon thought it would be a much more fitting punishment if she plucked each scale from her enemy’s writhing body and took those ugly horns as a trophy first. The dragon pushed off from the silt-covered ground she was standing on, paddling with her thin legs and flailing her thick tail to try and reach the surface. She had never been much of a swimmer, and her new melted carapace was heavy and bulky, but sheer force of will and hatred spurred her onwards.

As she swam, she noticed the water bubbling around her, boiled by the heat coming from her carapace. She snorted. The ocean knew to fear her, even in this warped and grotesque form. Soon, the Alatreon would know too.

* * *

The dragon breached the surface at long last and filled her crumpled lungs with fresh air for the first time in an age. The warm, shallow water of the little cove made for a refreshing change from the deep sea, though she wasn’t entirely sure where she was. Neither did she know where the Alatreon made her nest, though the dragon was sure it wouldn’t be too hard to find out. Smoke rising from the distance told her that she was probably fairly close to a human settlement. That was good. It meant she’d never be short of humans to torture if she needed something to vent her frustrations on.

Something brushed against the dragon’s stumpy wing. She swung her head around to bite whatever had dared to touch her in half, but she needn’t have bothered. Just the corpse of a dead leviathan, a green one that the dragon was fairly sure humans called a Ludroth. In fact, all around her the sea was boiling and churning, and corpses were floating to the surface like a twisted sort of reverse rain. An entire community of sea creatures killed by her mere presence.

Grinning to herself, the dragon slashed the belly of the Ludroth open with a claw. Congealed blood spilled out and mixed with the roiling water. She moved onto the next corpse, and the next, until the shallow cove had become a literal frothing bloodbath. A sea of boiling blood. The dragon liked that idea. It would be the ideal monument to her power, and should the Alatreon happen to see it she’d know her old enemy was back and greater than ever.

Human voices sounded from somewhere. The dragon craned her neck to look, and spotted a human ship making its way towards the smoke in the distance. It had been so long since she’d had the chance to play with humans. Sneering to herself, the dragon lowered herself into the water and silently swam towards the flimsy wooden ship.

* * *

Life was good for the dragon in the bloodied cove. Prey died just by wandering too close to her, and she had a near limitless supply of humans to go torment when she needed something to alleviate boredom. They’d come up with a new name for her: Dire Miralis. Initially, she’d been annoyed by that name. She was a Fatalis, a child of the original destroyer. And yet, the new name had a certain ring to it.

And besides, was it really right for her to call herself a Fatalis anymore? She didn’t really look like one anymore, and she was so much more powerful now. She brought death with her wherever she went, and her wings could catapult boulders into the sky to rain back down in a hail of fire and brimstone. She couldn’t fly anymore, and her heavy carapace made crossing the land a cumbersome chore. But she’d become a master of the ocean and the local humans feared her like they’d never feared her before.

So perhaps this new name fit her better. And when the Alatreon inevitably passed by, she would know that it was Dire Miralis who had killed her, not some random Fatalis. Perhaps Dire Miralis’ new, warped form was a blessing in disguise. After all, with the power of a volcano at her beck and call, perhaps she might even be able to conquer the great destroyer himself.

But for now, a ship’s horn was blaring from just outside her cove. Dire Miralis sank beneath the waves and paddled her tail in a smooth motion. Time to show these humans why her waters were best avoided.

Someday, the Alatreon would pass by. Until that day, Dire Miralis would be waiting.


	2. A Day at the Smithy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “Equipment being crafted at the Smithy.” (courtesy of IanTheWeirdGuy)  
> Clock Starts: 19:00  
> Clock Stops: 21:22  
> Time spent writing: ~1hr 50min  
> Time spent editing: ~30 min  
> Summary: The Manvil Smithy deals with liars, beggars, and flaming dragons. All in a day’s work.  
> Word Count: 2,500

For the Manvil Smithy, a given day was good if nothing caught on fire.

That wasn’t to say he didn’t know his craft. He commanded the heat of the forge as easily as any wyvern, turning chunks of disfigured stone into hardened armour plating and shaping monster scales into lethal weapons. The Wycademy’s hunters were glad to have him, and he was glad to serve them.

It was just that hunters had a certain knack for complicating things. The overly tough people had a talent for saving the townspeople, and just as much talent in the fine art of property damage. Patches of dragonblight and tiny cracks pockmarked the stone smelter, left by overeager hunters trying to test out their brand-new weapons. Parts of the little hut’s wooden walls had been unceremoniously redecorated with punted monster scales, soot stains, and the occasional splash of hunter nose-blood.

(Now that he was thinking about it, he probably needed to pull the Plesioth skull out of the doorframe before it fell and hurt someone.)

It felt like every second day when the Manvil Smithy had to ask the armourer if he could borrow a tool or two. The Bherna armourer was friendly enough, but her equipment was never up to par with the state-of-the-art Wyverian-made tools the Manvil Smithy normally used. (He still hadn’t forgiven that one huntress who tried to use his rounding hammer as a weapon against a Maccao that had wandered a bit too close to the village.)

Bherna had other little troubles, too. People picketing him when he used Moofah horns in armour for beginning hunters, the Bherna Gal trying to get him to give tours of his workshop to the hordes of tourists she kept promising would appear soon, and the Chief Researcher constantly trying to swipe the best monster materials for study. The Manvil Smithy wouldn’t change a thing.

Still, while the hunters had their own brand of rugged charm, there was always some level of frustration in the background when dealing with them. And sometimes, that frustration didn’t stay in the background.  


* * *

“I don’t understand why you can’t just give it to me,” huffed the huntress in front of him.

It had taken all of the Manvil Smithy’s willpower not to laugh at her when she first showed up at his doorstep, arms crossed, cheeks puffed, and only wearing half of an armour set. Given that she was wearing the standard issue armour for all new Wycademy hunters (well, some of it), she must have been quite the rookie. The charred edges on the remnants of her scarf told her all he needed to know.

“I can’t work for free,” he said. “I need materials and money before I can do my work.”

“I have no money, and I can’t just go out on a hunt looking like this,” wailed the huntress, flailing her arms wildly as though that would somehow conjure new armour.

The Manvil Smithy didn’t accept payment in arm gestures, unfortunately for the newbie huntress. “Do you have any spare monster parts you could pawn off? The guild’s always looking to buy new materials.”

The huntress’ eyes narrowed as if the Manvil Smithy had just suggested she eat a newborn baby. “Sell parts? As if!”

He managed to keep the most of the sigh internal. A hoarder, then. “Then I guess I can’t help you.”

In some ways, the noise the huntress was making could have been described as ‘grinding teeth’. ‘Rocks falling’ would also have worked, or perhaps ‘Gravios impression’. With a hiss not unlike a Gigginox about to strike, the huntress stalked over to the Chief Researcher and all but threw a clump of Great Maccao feathers at him in exchange for a small pouch of zenny.

With renewed vitriol, the rookie huntress made her way back over to the Manvil Smithy. Without breaking eye contact, she pointed at his catalogue. 

“I want that one,” she said, pointing at a set made with Bulldrome materials and shoving both the money and a sack of pelts and bones at him.

The Manvil Smithy peered into the bag. “I need a Bulldrome Tusk to make that.”

At the very least, he had the good sense to cover his ears before the inevitable shriek of rage.  


* * *

“Hey dude, what up? Not got much time to talk today, so just gimme the goods and lemme be on my way.”

One of the more dismissive types, eh? The Manvil Smithy could deal with that. “What’re you here for?”

The hunter proudly presented an armful of scales, talons, and a bright red tail. Too bright. The Manvil Smithy wasn’t sure that was a shade that occurred in nature. Still, he grabbed the bundle and set the parts down on the table for later inspection.

“I’m not looking for anything too fancy. Just that—“ the hunter paused to point at the vivid illustration of the high-ranked Rathalos armour, “—and that.” His finger slid across the pages to the Red Wing great sword.

The Manvil Smithy wasn’t surprised. Rathalos was a popular armour set among hunters who had found their feet and outgrown Bulldromes and Ludroths. His gaze slid across the pile of materials. By his estimate, he had enough parts to make the set, but there was something off.

Some of the scales and shells were the matte red characteristic of a Rathalos. Others, though, were a particularly eye-searing shade of crimson. And that tail wasn’t even the right shape.

“Are you sure these are all from a Rathalos?” asked the Manvil Smithy, one eyebrow raised.

The hunter tittered out a nervous laugh, rubbing his knuckles together. “Yeah, dude, totally! Some of ‘em must be from a new subspecies or something, ‘cause I swear that colour’s completely natural.”

Unconvinced, the Manvil Smithy picked up one of the suspicious scales and ran his thumb along it. Some of the red came away and left a stain on his fingertip. Beneath the overly bright red lay a much more natural colour, stained a little brown by the red paint but still distinctly green.

“This is a Rathian scale,” deadpanned the Manvil Smithy.

“What? Dude, have you been smoking Unique Ferns?” asked the hunter just a little too loudly. He barked out a loud, obnoxious laugh. “Probably shouldn’t be tripping on the job, am I right? Now just make the set and I can get a move on.”

Hefting the tail into his arms and looking it over, the Manvil Smithy was not at all surprised to see that it ended in long, hairlike thorns. A Rathian tail.

“I can’t make you the Rathalos set without...” He trailed off to count the painted scales and shells. “...another five Rathalos scales, and a Rathalos tail.”

“But duuuuuude,” the hunter whined. “I already told you, those are legit.”

“Let’s ask the Chief Researcher what he thinks, since we’re at an impasse,” said the Manvil Smithy smugly.

The hunter deflated. “Rathalos, Rathian, they’re basically the same, right? C’mon bro, you can’t make an exception just this once?“

The Manvil Smithy shrugged. “They don’t work the same.”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to hunt a Rathalos? Bro, they’ve got the worst fire you’ve ever seen and this dumb maneuver I can’t dodge no matter what I try,” said the hunter, miming out the fire and the poison talons with his hands.

“Why not get a team together to hunt one down?” suggested the Manvil Smithy.

“As if any G-rankers are gonna want to help out some nobody,” scoffed the hunter. “Too busy eating Unique Mushrooms and sipping Goldenfish Brew.”

The Manvil Smithy wasn’t too sure about that. He’d seen G-rank hunters before, and they weren’t nearly so bourgeoisie as this guy was making them out to be. Most of the holes in his walls and ceiling had come from them, actually. He didn’t think he’d ever forget the huntress who’d wanted him to upgrade her Valstrax gunlance. And who’d then tested it out right inside the shop and blown a hole through his roof. Admittedly, it had made a nice skylight until he fixed it, but tripping over Felynes sleeping in the patch of sunlight had gotten annoying after a while.

“Dude, are you even listening to me?” asked the hunter, who’d apparently been talking the entire time that the Manvil Smithy was reminiscing.

“Yes, yes, go sign up for a quest in the Hub and come back when you’ve gotten the materials,” he muttered before passing the painted scales back to the hunter.

The distraught hunter groaned and tried to put up a last bit of resistance, but soon gave up and trudged away. The Manvil Smithy’s thoughts were occupied. He didn’t often get G-ranked hunters coming by. Bherna’s Hub didn’t cater to them. But every once in a while, one of them showed up and did their best to destroy his little shop. With any luck, the next G-rank who passed by would be a nice, friendly one who wouldn’t break anything or try to give him counterfeit materials.

* * *

At the inhuman gargling noise, the Manvil Smithy wondered if he was about to die in an attack by some unknown monster. Slowly, he turned around and came face-to-face with a grim visage.

The hunter wore what had probably once been a very distinguished set of armour, modelled after a sleek black beetle and decorated with a flapping cape. The Manvil Smithy was impressed at the craftsmanship. If he ever met the one who’d forged it, they’d have to swap tips.

They were going to have one heck of a task repairing it. One of the helmet’s horns was cracked, and half of the faceplate had been shorn away, leaving one of the hunter’s tired eyes exposed. Dents lined the chest, claw-marks marred the waist, and one of the greaves was missing altogether. Somehow, the cape had survived almost completely intact, though it had clearly been burned along the edges.

“What can I do for you?” asked the Manvil Smithy in his happiest, chirpiest customer service voice. This guy looked like he needed it.

“...want a glaive,” said the hunter in a low, tired voice, like speaking was too much effort. The Manvil Smithy was starting to wonder if he should call a doctor.

“What kind?” he asked, presenting his catalogue.

The hunter flipped through the book slowly and deliberately. “It’s not in here.”

“Well, I’m not bound by that book. Show me what you’ve got and I’ll see what I can do.”

The hunter nodded slowly and pulled out a gigantic bag that was literally still dripping with fresh blood. The red droplets sizzled on the ground where they landed, leaving tiny pockmarks in the wood. Before the Manvil Smithy could stop him, the hunter dropped the sack on the worktable. It took all of the Manvil Smithy’s willpower not to groan out loud at the telltale hissing sound of acidic blood eating through steel. Great. Something that would need replacing later.

“Let’s see what we’ve got here,” he muttered to himself as he reached into the bag.

A searing heat flowed into his hands the second he made contact. Yelping he dropped the scale he’d grabbed, letting it fall back into the sack with a clatter.

“Ah, what is this?” asked the Manvil Smithy.

The hunter blinked. “Crimson Fatalis.”

“...Crimson Fatalis? Meteor-summoning, always angry, always on fire Crimson Fatalis?”

“Yes,” said the hunter dully. “Sorry, should’ve warned you.”

Should’ve warned him indeed. What was he meant to do with Crimson Fatalis materials? Who in their right mind would work with Crimson Fatalis materials? The stuff was cursed.

“I don’t think I can help you with this,” the Manvil Smithy admitted. “Maybe the Master Blacksmith in Port Tanzia could, or The Man if you can figure out where he is.”

“It wants to be a glaive now,” said the hunter.

“What does?”

“The Crimson Fatalis. Make it into a glaive or it’ll get mad.”

The Manvil Smithy wasn’t too sure how he was supposed to respond to that. “How can it want to be a glaive? It’s dead... Right?”

“Sort of.”

Did he really want to know how a monster could be ‘sort of’ dead? He didn’t think he did, nope, not at all. Instead, he asked the slightly less concerning question. “What’ll happen if it gets mad?”

“It won’t let me sleep. And it might try to make me crazy. It won’t stop talking to me.”

Calling a doctor would have been the right move after all.

“Well, I guess I could try...” the Manvil Smithy muttered. He tipped the sack over, spreading the burning, acidic parts all across his worktable. It was already damaged, may as well make it worse. There were the usual bits—scales, shells, a massive, gnarled horn. There was even a giant, leathery wing, whole and almost intact, if a bit crumpled from being mashed into a sack.

But the worst part was the eye. It wasn’t that big, only about the size of a golfball, but the crystalline orb radiated so much heat and malice the Manvil Smithy was surprised it hadn’t burned right through the table. Even as he examined it to try and see what he could do with it, he could feel its spiteful gaze on him, and he could swear the slitted pupil was following him around and watching his every move.

“It doesn’t like you,” offered the hunter, as if that was somehow helpful.

It took a long, long time before the Manvil Smithy was able to craft the Crimson Fatalis glaive. He’d had to ask the Chief Researcher to help him find a blueprint to use as a reference (who was crazy enough to do this in the past?), and then he’d had to adjust it for modern techniques. The end result was something that was sleek, powerful, and still very much felt like it hated everything under the sun.

By the time he was finished, the strange hunter had gotten his armour repaired and looked less like he was about to drop dead. He was actually quite a nice conversation partner when he wasn’t acting like a zombie. When he accepted the glaive, though his face was covered, the Manvil Smithy could hear how pleased he was.

“Now you can stop yelling at me about disrespect,” cooed the hunter to the glaive, as if it was a living thing.

(The Manvil Smithy hoped it wasn’t, but he had to admit he was having his doubts.)

After accepting his payment, the Manvil Smithy was ready to wave the terrifying G-ranker and his equally terrifying weapon goodbye, but just as the newly armed hunter was leaving, the glaive flared to life in a burst of heat and blast dust.

The fire didn’t take too much effort to put out, but the Manvil Smithy should have known he wouldn’t get away with making a weapon out of a cursed harbinger of destruction. It was just one of those days.


	3. A Wish With a Price

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "A lone traveler on a personal airship finds a windmill on a floating island. Inside is a man with a shop, selling all manner of curious baubles and trinkets..." (courtesy of Baron_Shiro)  
> Clock Starts: 15:47  
> Clock Stops: 17:41  
> Time Spent Writing: ~1hr 55min  
> Time Spent Editing: none, we die like men.  
> Summary: Floating islands are strange in and of themselves. Weird windmills with weirder wyverians? Also odd. A star-shaped stone that grants wishes? Now that’s downright impossible.  
> Word Count: 2,719
> 
> Extra Notes: This oneshot contains mild body horror. Read at your own discretion.

The sun is low in the sky when the strange silhouette appears on the horizon. At first, you think it’s a cloud. And why wouldn’t you? You’re out above the middle of the ocean, alone on your dinky little airship. Nothing but empty horizons all around. You know that the nearest land is the New World, hundreds of miles away.

But if it is a cloud, then it’s a huge one, and dark. The closer you get to it, the more you realise that it is too sturdy, its edges too defined, to be anything other than an island.

Perhaps your eyes are playing tricks on you? Surely there isn’t _really_ an island hovering above the water, flat on top and jagged beneath like an upside-down mountain. Curiosity drives you to grip your ship’s wheel and bank towards the floating island. You want to get closer, if only to prove to yourself that it is nothing more than a mirage, destined to vanish with the shifting of the light.

To your consternation, the island doesn’t shimmer and fade away. Instead, it comes into sharper focus, until you can see the trees and the grass that coat it like fur, the thick roots that cascade over the edges like frozen waterfalls, and the windmill that stands just next to an airship’s berth.

You eye the sturdy post and the wooden boardwalk. It’s as if the floating island is inviting you in, leading you towards the windmill with its marble exterior and colourful vanes, each a different size and shape. Closer inspection reveals that each vane is made from a different monster’s wing—Rathalos, Garuga, Astalos, and something black and glittery that you can’t identify.

Something in the back of your mind is telling you to turn around, to put the island out of your mind and forget you ever saw it. The childlike part of your heart brushes those thoughts aside. A real life floating island, like something out of a storybook. You want to explore it, to venture into the windmill and find what secrets hide within. Before you can stop yourself, you’re bringing your airship in close and tying it to the post.

The island bobs and sways in the wind, shifting from side-to-side and occasionally dipping down in a lurch that sends your heart into your mouth. You’ve spent so long flying your airship around the world that you have no trouble keeping your balance, but the thought of the floating island suddenly plummeting into the sea fills your veins with ice. Something so beautiful and otherworldly should never be destroyed.

Before long, you’ve made it up to the windmill. Intricate designs decorate the thick wooden doors, showing steaming potions and glowing jewels, dragons being slain by enchanted weapons, and men sprouting wings and flying off. What sort of place is this? Does somebody live here?

You raise a gloved hand to knock on the door, but before you make contact it suddenly swings open. A burst of heat and the thick scent of sandalwood and paper rush into your face, reddening your cheeks and filling your eyes with water.

“Come in, come in,” says a cheery voice, and you blink away the tears to see a tall, lanky man looking down at you with a grin. “It’s quite cold out here, and it’s been so long since I’ve had a guest.”

You hadn’t really noticed the cold, but that’s probably because you’re bundled up in a thick coat woven from Moofah and Banbaro fur. You step into the windmill and the man closes the door behind you. Soft orange light illuminates the interior, and a thin haze of incense hangs in the air. It’s positively sweltering, so you let your coat slide off your shoulders.

The man crosses the room and leans on a counter, moulded from carved monster bones and topped with a Barioth pelt. “Welcome to my little shop,” he says.

You look around, and realise that this is indeed a shop. Shelves and display tables cover every available surface, each with some strange artifact sitting on top. How does this man get any customers? Does the island move? You’ve flown this route many times and never seen it before, so it’s not outside the realm of possibility.

“Look around. See if anything catches your fancy,” says the shopkeeper, and there’s a subtle glint of mischief in his eye. Is it your imagination, or is there a slight slit to his pupils? His ears are pointed, so you know he’s a wyverian, but do wyverians have slitted eyes? You suppose they aren’t all the same. Maybe some do, while others don’t.

Still, you take the time to wander around, examining the merchandise with a critical eye. You’re probably the first customer the strange shopkeeper has seen in a while, so the least you could do is buy something.

Unfortunately, you’re having a hard time figuring out what you can afford. There are some truly stunning works of art on display, like a necklace made from a dozen different monster gems, or a statuette of Fatalis carved from an elder dragon’s bone, so vivid and lifelike it could take off at any moment. Each one has a name—‘The Chain of Fortune’, ‘The Black Dragon’s Beacon’—and a price.

You’re just not sure how to interpret the price tags. ‘Your luck’ is the listed price for the necklace, and perhaps more worryingly, the shopkeeper apparently wants ‘your sanity’ in exchange for the Fatalis statue. Perhaps it’s some sort of a joke, and the shopkeeper will let you name your price and haggle from there.

Alarm bells are going off in your head as you survey more of the assorted trinkets and baubles. There’s a huge, oval boulder which claims to be a Dalamadur’s egg, and for which the shopkeeper is asking for ‘your body and mind’. You spot a wind-up toy of a songbird, supposedly able to bend your enemies’ minds to suit your own needs, all for the low price of ‘your freedom’.

After passing so many concerning trinkets and their even more concerning price tags, you stumble upon something odd. It’s tiny compared to the rest of the objects in the shop, small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. A little gem, carved into the shape of a seven-pointed star, faintly warm to the touch. Mist swirls within, forming the shapes of constellations and nebulae, always shifting and never showing the same thing twice.

‘The Wishing Stone’, the sign calls it, but what really catches your eye is the lack of a price tag. Grasping the tiny gem in your hands, you stride over to the counter, where the shopkeeper has been patiently watching you the entire time.

“Found something you like?” he asks, and flashes you a smile that’s just a little too sharp.

You show him the stone and ask him how much it costs, half-expecting him to say ‘your soul’. Instead, he chuckles and waves his hand.

“That depends on how you use it. The stone takes its own price.”

You raise a brow at that. It’s beautiful, sure, and it really does look like a wish-granting artifact from a fairy tale, but that’s all it is. A pretty stone, nothing more. It can’t really grant wishes, can it?

Pulling out a pouch of zenny, you try to make the shopkeeper an offer, but he refuses to accept any form of payment.

“Take it. It’s yours to keep and use as you see fit. Just watch what you wish for, as the saying goes.” At that, he laughs like he’s just said the funniest thing in the world, and you awkwardly giggle along with him.

Once you’ve pocketed the stone, the shopkeeper seems all too eager to kick you out of his shop, ushering you out of the door and back out into the clean, bracing air of the floating island. After so long spent in the incense-choked windmill, the fresh air makes you a little dizzy. You’re so disoriented you almost leave without your coat, until the shopkeeper tosses it out after you.

You pick it up, dust it off, and sling it back over your shoulders. Before long, you’ve unhitched your ship and are rising off into the sky, bidding the strange island and its stranger shopkeeper goodbye. For some reason, you can’t shake the feeling that something truly terrible has just happened.

You’re not sure why, though. All you did was land on a floating island which by all rights shouldn’t exist, go into a mysterious shop owned by a mysterious man with weird eyes, examine odd works of art demanding questionable prices, and leave with one of the pieces without having to pay a single zenny.

Admittedly, when you put it that way, it does sound like the set up to a horror story.

The next day, as you greet the frigid dawn air and watch the last of the stars wink out, you scan the horizon and find the island is nowhere to be seen. It’s possible that you just drifted away from it—it’s impossible to truly remain in the same place overnight when you’re the only one manning an airship—but something tells you that if you try to find it again, it won’t be there.

Was it ever real? You dig your hand under your coat and into your shirt pocket, and find something small and sharp. Withdrawing the supposed wishing stone, you feel a shudder run down your spine. So it wasn’t dreams blending with reality.

The stone itself is small and unassuming. Pretty to look at, and nothing more. It can’t grant wishes. That’s impossible. You tug off a glove and hold it in your bare hand, ignoring the nip of cold air at your fingertips. It’s warm, so warm, and as you run your thumb along it you feel how unnaturally _smooth_ it is, not a single dimple or other imperfection marring the surface.

How does one make a wish on a stone, you wonder? Do you just hold it in your hand and make a wish out loud? How would you know that your wish had come true? You can’t imagine that the stone would announce that to you. You suppose some things would be immediately noticeable, like if you’d wished to be taller.

Tossing the stone in the air and catching it in your hand, you jokingly wish to be able to request help from wild monsters. It would certainly be easier than having to halt your research and put up a request for a hunter’s aid every time a Great Jaggi gets a little too close to the camp.

After a few minutes of not feeling yourself filled with eldritch knowledge about monster psychology, you laugh softly to yourself. Of course it didn’t work, it’s a _rock._ A smooth, shiny, sparkly rock, with no other properties. Maybe you’ll ask the local smithy to make a badge or something out of it.

A bead of sweat dribbles down your face, and you become aware of just how hot you are. It’s early morning, and you’re high up in the sky in the thin, chilling air, but your thick coat feels like it’s suffocating you.

You reach to undo the buttons, but your fingers feel stiff and clumsy, your fingernails thicker and darker than you remember them being. After a minute or so of fumbling, the coat falls away, and for a second you feel the blissful chill of the biting winds before the burning sensation is back again.

Heat pulses through you like the worst kind of fever, radiating from your chest and out into your limbs, and for the briefest of instants you consider stripping right then and there. Whatever dignity you have left stays your increasingly numb hands. You chance a look at your hands, to try and see what the problem is, and gasp at the sight.

All but one of your fingers have melted together into a solid mass the colour of charcoal. What’s left of your hand is now a bright, vivid green, and you know you’ve seen this somewhere before. Remembering really isn’t the most important thing right now. Your last remaining finger is lengthening, extending out until it’s almost as long as you are tall, and you don’t need to look at your other arm to know the exact same thing is happening there.

Your breath comes fast and shallow, until suddenly your throat is so full of air that you can’t breathe through it, and your thoughts are panicked and jumbled as you think about the irony, about how you’ll die because you choked on _air_ of all things. Stars explode across your vision, and when you try to call for help (even knowing that no one is around to hear it), all that comes out is a strangled squawk.

For a while you lie in sweltering agony, unable to breathe, unable to move, barely able to _think_ as your malformed hands continue their grotesque changes, as something flat and bony makes itself known at the base of your spine, as the clothes you foolishly chose to keep on are ripped and torn by whatever’s happening to your chest.

After a long, long moment, which stretches for eternity but can’t truly have been that long, the heat starts to subside. Your throat is still blocked and full of air, but now it feels like you can actually breathe around it. With a Herculean effort, you try to use your hands to push yourself up.

It doesn’t quite work the way you wanted it to. With a loud bang and an undignified chirp of pain, you crack your beak on the wooden deck of your ship and sputter out what was supposed to be a curse or two, but comes out as angry chittering.

Beak?

You cross your eyes and discover that yes, you do in fact have a beak now. It takes you a few moments to process that. When you do, you shriek at the top of your lungs, so loud you almost deafen yourself, and you can actually _feel_ your throat deflating as you scream.

After scrambling to your feet (claws now, the scraping sound you hear as you try to stand tells you that much), you swing your too-flexible neck to give yourself a look over. Bright green scales, colourful feathers, a flat tail, and wings armed with flintstones. You’re a Qurupeco now.

How did that happen? You’re a scholar, and you know full well that a human cannot randomly become a monster. As you examine the deck and the tattered remains of your outfit, your sharp eyes fall on the star-shaped stone, tossed aside right around the time you tried to take off your coat.

Two-and-two crash together with so much force it almost physically knocks you over. Of course it was the damned stone. You saw all the warning signs, acknowledged them, and then still jokingly made a wish on it anyway. Really, you kind of deserve this.

What was it you wished for, again? The ability to call monsters for help?

Oh. Now it makes sense.

Muttering to yourself, a noise that translates as irritated squawking, you reach down with a flintstone and try to pick up the wishing stone. It did this to you, now it can undo it. If only you could get a hold of it. Not having fingers makes the task unnecessarily difficult.

With a chirp of victory, you manage to balance the stone on your former hand, but before you can try to make a wish to go back to normal, the stone slides off, bounces on the deck...

...and skids right through the railing and over the edge.

By the time you’ve stopped tripping over yourself long enough to peer over the edge of the deck, the stone is nowhere to be seen. Swallowed up by the sea, along with your dreams of ever being yourself again.

You fall back onto your haunches, beak hanging open in disbelief. That’s just that, then? A whole life ruined by one bad decision. Well, if you’re being realistic, a lot of bad decisions all in a row, but still. It seems a bit harsh.

...Maybe you can find a university for monsters?


	4. Salt and Smoke

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: “Dire Miralis has woken up. How will the areas be affected by a living volcano and can it be stopped?” (courtesy of Kyle)  
> Clock Starts: 12:51  
> Clock Stops: 14:47  
> Time Spent Writing: 1hr 56mins  
> Time Spent Editing: Haha none  
> Word Count: 2,661  
> Summary: Sometimes, a one-in-a-million chance is all it takes to put an end to hundreds of lives.
> 
> Extra Notes: This is not a happy story. Content warnings for death and destruction on a mass scale, as well as implied suicide, all described in semi-visceral detail.

The fisherman doesn’t notice when he causes the apocalypse.

There is, after all, no reason for him to think anything is strange. It’s a routine trip, out in his little schooner, just him and his crew of three. A gentle breeze is blowing and the water is calm and clear; the ideal day for hauling in nets bulging with tuna and catfish and even the occasional sharq. Soon the seasons will be changing and the schools of fish will be leaving on the currents. It’s important for him and his crew to pull in as many fish as possible, before the lull of winter sets in.

With the help of one of his deckhands, a round-faced young lad who dreams of one day being captain of his own ship, the fisherman drops anchor. It takes only a few seconds for the rope to stop feeding out as the heavy metal weight thuds onto the seabed. The fisherman has been to this cove many times before, and never had any problems despite its awful reputation.

The Tainted Sea, they call it, for its blood-red water and the countless ancient shipwrecks that litter the shore around it. Supposedly, a terrible beast slumbers beneath the waves, waiting to rise and wreak its vengeance on the world above the surface. The fisherman has never put much stock in such rumours, and so he grabs his nets and prepares to cast them out.

No one onboard notices when the anchor line goes slack, not do they notice the dark shape in the water beneath their ship. Steam curls up from the surface of the sea, mistaken for salt spray by the one person who actually sees it. It isn’t until the water swells and bursts up in a shower of steam that the fisherman finally sees the monster.

Tall and dark, lit only by the threads of magma that course along its body, the beast looms over the boat, its mouth open with crooked teeth bared in a jagged sneer. It shrieks, and suddenly the ship is rocking and rolling on boiling seas, and something hot and heavy has punched a hole right through the hull.

The last thing the fisherman sees, before the fire and the rock-hard talons claim him and his ship in a shower of steam and splinters, is the metallic glint of his anchor, lodged in the monster’s wing.

* * *

At first, the sentry isn’t sure what he’s looking at. After the roar and the plume of steam earlier, he had been put on high alert in search of monsters. But he had yet to see anything, until the dark shape appeared in the water just off the edge of the pier. The sentry squints and grabs a spyglass. Whatever the monster is, it is huge, and the trail it leaves behind in the water is cloudy and red, blood mixing with the mire of magma that leaks from its winglike appendages.

The monster bursts out of the water with a shriek, salt spray vaporising around it and leaving it cloaked in a shimmering veil of mist. Only its long neck and its strange, winglike protrusions are visible above the water. Hot, glowing blood leaks from a wound on one of its wings, where a twisted mess of metal that might once have been an anchor gleams like a gruesome trophy. 

Some small part of the sentry hopes the monster will go away, that it will turn around and leave once it has made its presence known. One look at its glowing eyes, stark against its melted brown carapace, is all it takes for the sentry to discard that idea.

Stumbling back, he bangs the alarm gong as loud as he can. It’s an urgent signal aimed at the hopelessly small contingent of hunters in town; with this unknown monster glowering down at them, waiting for the Guild to send hunters to their humble island is simply not an option. One of the other people stationed in the watchtower, an ancient Wyverian with paperlike, wrinkled skin and eyes cloudy with age, yelps and shouts a name.

The sentry doesn’t like the tone the old Wyverian uses when she names the monster ‘Dire Miralis’, the black smelting dragon. Her voice is filled with despair and distant, barely recalled anguish. The sentry chances a look down into the streets and sees that already, a hunter and two Felynes are charging out with weapons aimed right at the sea beast.

The monster stares at the approaching hunters with no hint of fear. In a sudden motion, it screams, and its stumpy wings erupt like the cone of a volcano. Superheated rocks rain down in a lethal hailstorm, and the sentry retches as an armoured leg goes flying and a cat is crushed with a sickening crunch. Through the choking smoke, he can’t see what happens to the other cat, but the haunting yowl and the visceral scent of burning flesh give him a pretty good idea.

The monster puts one talon on the pier and tries to haul itself out of the water, but the wood catches fire and cracks beneath its weight. Sniffing at the air and rumbling deep in its throat, the beast keeps working its way through the pier until nothing more is left, and just when the sentry thinks there might be hope, that the monster won’t find its way past the shore, it rears up and the sentry finally realises that it’s so much bigger than he thought, and no sea-wall will stop it.

A pair of hunters armed with bowguns have arrived on the scene, taking aim at the beast’s face. Twin crag shots lodge themselves in its snout and shatter, striking the monster’s head with red-hot shrapnel. Unconcerned, the monster snorts and spits a fireball, and the older hunter just barely manages to dodge. The flames strike the common-house instead, and the sentry dearly hopes that no one is inside.

Valiantly, the hunters try piercing shots instead. The monster scarcely notices as it plants its talons on the sea-wall and slowly clambers out of the water, steaming and smoking as its long, thick tail and oddly short legs are revealed. It rears up to stand on its hind legs and the sentry is suddenly acutely aware that he is perched at its eye level.

Smoke fills the air as the fire from the common-house spreads to the neighbouring Guild office. Villagers are fleeing, but this is a small island and there is nowhere for them to run. Paying no mind to the hunters still attempting to fight it off, the monster launches another volley of its apocalyptic meteors. A house shatters in a burst of splinters and embers, and a child screams for her mother before abruptly falling silent.

The old Wyverian whispers a prayer to herself and to her ancestors, begging for protection from the demon that has brought with it armageddon. Something in her voice draws the beast’s attention, and it slowly swings its long neck to look into the watchtower.

Peering between the wooden pillars, the beast stares at the sentry with amber eyes. The sentry nearly chokes at the sight. Those are no true eyes; they are crystals. Cold, empty crystals. The sentry had expected to find rage or hatred in its gaze, but he sees its eyes and realises that the beast feels nothing as it rips apart his home. Maybe it felt slighted, at some point, but now it’s just bringing destruction for the sake of it, with no greater purpose than its own amusement.

There is no desire that they can satisfy, no rage to quell. And as the monster opens its jaws to spew forth a fiery death, the sentry realises that there is no ending this pointless rampage.

* * *

The hunter trembles and tightens her quaking grip on her bowgun. Deep breaths, in and out, except she can’t breathe through the dark smoke that chokes the air. How many buildings have gone up in flames? When did her world become consumed by the ash and thick, salty steam that the monster brings with it?

Her mentor hefts his gun and shoots the monster in its wing, just as it exhales a breath of flame directly into the watchtower. Another building gone. More lives lost. Another failure by those who swore to protect the village.

With its work in the tower done, the monster falls onto all fours and steps over to examine the two hunters who have so desperately been trying to stop it. It’s strange how it moves. Its legs are so short and slender compared to the lengthy heft of its neck and tail that it would look comical were it not so terrifying.

Her mentor shouts at it and shoots another piercing shot. The round rips through the dragon’s shoulder and emerges on the other side. The monster sniffs at the wound and suddenly yawns, crooked teeth and lapping tongue on full display, and the air is filled with the reeking scent of long-dead leviathan and rotting flesh, amplified by the stifling heat that emerges from the beast’s mouth.

With its mouth still wide open, a malicious glint appears in the monster’s eyes and a glow ignites in its throat, and suddenly the hunter’s mentor is gone, reduced to a black smear on the ground beneath smouldering embers. She shudders and tries to raise her weapon, but the dragon has closed its mouth and is looming over her, and she finds that she’s forgotten how to pull the trigger.

The dragon presses its snout right up to her face, and its carapace is so hot she feels her skin blistering at its touch. Tears drip down her face and she readies herself for the end. The monster pulls its head away and opens its jaws wide. She closes her eyes and waits.

The fire never comes. Instead, a thick, wet tongue runs itself over her, coating her in the rancid stench of decay. Over and over again the dragon licks her, and just as she starts to wonder how long it will take for it to get bored and just eat her already, it stops. 

She chances opening her eyes and sees it rearing back up onto its hind legs. A chuffing, rumbling sound emanates from its throat, and the hunter realises that she is hearing draconic laughter, and it is the most ghastly sound she has ever heard. Still laughing, it strolls away without a care in the world.

The hunter falls to her knees, arms wrapped around herself, shuddering beneath the weight of the monster’s presence. Hot, sticky drool coats her face and her chest. The monster has spared her. It chose not to kill her. Despite its horrific melted visage and the lava that courses through its veins, the dragon is capable of thought. It _laughed_ at her, she just knows it.

Fresh tears spill from her eyes, summoned by the sting of smoke and salt and humiliation. Ashes swirl on the sea breeze as the monster makes its way further into what was once a tiny fishing village. Already, the hunter can hear screams and the cracking of buildings being crushed beneath the monster’s feet.

Except that’s not right, is it? This thing is no monster. Because a monster is something which is incapable of caring, something which cannot think about the lives it ends as it lives its simple life. But this beast spared her, when it could have killed her on the spot. It chose to relish in her terror and her misery, and left her standing in the barren streets with a grin on its face. This is no monster.

This is a demon, capable of showing mercy and simply choosing not to.

And in the face of that revelation, the hunter feels her world fall away. She can’t kill the demon, she knows that. Nobody in town can, and by the time the Guild sends its response, there will be no town left to save, and the brightest and the best that the hunting world has to offer will meet their burning end. The demon will live on, and when its work is finished it will return to the depths from whence it came, to strike another day.

No chance of winning. No home left to save. No hope left to cling to.

It’s no wonder, then, that the hunter finds her legs carrying her towards the sea-wall. Wooden planks charred coal-black float in the reddened sea. The air is hot, desperately so, and the hunter thinks a swim would be nice. The worthless bowgun slips from her arms as she steps into the water, first one leg, then two.

The water here is deeper than it should be. The demon must have gouged out a crater. That’s alright. The hunter doesn’t mind. The water is cool and crisp even if it stinks of blood. Sighing, the hunter lets herself sink beneath the waves.

The water is cold, and dark. It smothers all sounds, dampens fear. Here, beneath the waves, maybe everything is okay. The hunter sighs and watches the bubbles rise. After everything that’s happened, this is where she should be. She smiles, and lets her eyes slip closed.

* * *

Dire Miralis licks her lips and breathes in the mingled scents of destruction. Blood and metal, soot and salt and human urine. Thick, cloying fear. Even the air itself tastes of despair. Screaming and crying and muttered prayers fill her ears, uniting into a chorus of utter defeat.

Dire Miralis has never heard a sweeter sound.

She feels a random human shatter beneath her talons. It doesn’t scream, so it was either dead or catatonic. She doesn’t particularly care, as she shoves her snout into a burned out nest that was looking a little too intact for her tastes. The husk is full of humans and their hatchlings, looking up at her with pleading eyes.

They aren’t fighting back, so Dire Miralis rapidly loses interest in them. With a puff of fire and a burst of meteors for good measure, she turns to investigate something else. Most of the human nests have been shattered or burned by now. Aside from the sharp-human she left alive earlier (and, oh, the taste of its fear had been so delicious!) she can’t see a single human that has been left uninjured in the colony.

She marvels at her own handiwork, and, feeling satisfied, turns to crawl back into the sea. Her hind legs are beginning to ache from supporting her own weight for so long. Idly, she reaches back and yanks the metal-thing from her wing. Her magma has melted it into slag by now, and as soon as it is removed the wound begins to close. Dire Miralis has no idea what it is, but it woke her from her slumber and so she has to thank it for a fun day out. She tosses it into a nearby nest and promptly forgets about it.

A strangely intact corpse brushes up against her shoulder as she lowers herself back into the water. Dire Miralis sniffs at it, and decides it isn’t worth her attention. Just before she brings her head back below the waves, she hears a hoarse human voice cry out in delirious joy. She could listen to the garbles and decipher their meaning, but why bother? This voice has struck a sour note in her perfect symphony, and that should be punished.

Dire Miralis contemplates crawling back out to finish the job, but her hips and knees are aching. She snorts and sinks below the waves. Her day is almost over. She’s ready to return to her nest and go back to sleep, with beautiful visions of breaking bones and bleeding wounds dancing behind her eyes. But before that, she has one last joy to indulge in. She aims her wings at the rock-shelf that makes up the colony’s shore.

She has an island to sink.


End file.
